Ron Dakron reads in Astoria, OR

Ron Dakron reads from "Mantids" at Godfather's Books in Astoria, Oregon this Saturday (11/14) at 1:00 p.m.

"Mantids is an update of the world's oldest novel—Petronius's Satyricon—with a twist. In Satyricon, the hero can't get an erection; in Mantids, the narrator can't get rid of one. Combine his Viagra overdose with an invasion by mutant female praying mantids and a scuzzed-out, speed-tweaker Astoria, Oregon locale—add biting comedy, a warrior heroine and stir into a B-movie plot stew—and you have a classic Dakron novel, chock full of sardonic prose and more fun than a barrel of junkies."

http://blackheron.mav.net/dakron/Mantids.html

The painting

There is a painting that hangs on my living room wall. At first it seems innocuous, a vision of a simple Sunday morning in the dry California hills, where a family walks to a red-roofed, whitewashed church along an unpaved road. A board and post fence, tilted and cockeyed as if intoxicated from road dust, wanders underneath a tree—a Eucalyptus?—and out of the frame.

What a pretty scene! The church is charming. The sun is hot on the yellowing, mid-summer hills, and a thin, white scrape of clouds is so bright it likely makes our devoted wayfarers squint as they approach the house of worship, where the doors are open and a behatted gentleman and a woman in a yellow dress are already on their way inside.

Can you smell the leaves of the Balsam Poplars near the parsonage? What pleasant shade they offer this time of year! And although the grass along the road grows dry and has begun to lose its green, its golden sheen and hay-sweet scent fills one's head with fond memories of simpler times. Happier times.

But don't be fooled. Lean nearer the painting and look closer. Okay, now you're breathing on the glass and getting it steamed up. Either stop breathing, or move a few inches back.

Now, do you see it? I know. I didn't see it either, at first. Actually, I didn't notice it for a long time. To think that this painting has been on my wall for years, and for decades before that hung in my grandmother's living room.

Have I told my mother? Of course not! She probably grew up with this painting, and I don't know what frightens me more—knowing that it loomed like a sinister phantasm over her lighthearted Parchesi games and dolly tea parties, or worse, that she saw it, kept the terrifying secret, and keeps it still.

Every time I glance at the painting, I want to call out to the couple entering the church, "Look out! Don't do it! Run!" But I know that if they attempted to flee back down the steps, a breeze would lift the man's hat off his head, and he would go back for it; he always goes back! And then it's too late. Too late! Oh, he never listens to my warnings or his wife's admonitions. (I think he goes back for the hat because his wife is a nag and always telling him what to do and it drives him crazy. It's not even his favorite hat.)

If I could enter the painting, I would run in front of the horse pulling the spring wagon, waving my arms, pleading to the unwitting family to Stop! To save themselves! I grab the horse's bridle to pull his head away before he turns towards the parsonage and his blinders no longer protect him from the horrors. But he is too strong for me. He rears, the dry, worn shaft snaps, the farmer's family tumbles from the wagon, and there are cries of grief and terror. At this point I leave the painting, because I'm pretty scared, and would not be much help to the people in the wagon anyway.

You might ask, Why do I keep this painting? Go head. Ask. Well, I guess I keep forgetting to take it down. I tend to easily get distracted, and after an episode in which I try to save the painting's incognizant human (and horse) subjects, I notice that there's still that pile of get-well-soon cards stacked on the television cabinet, or the cable box is sure getting dusty, and I should get the feather duster out and clean it.

We have an oven sitting in our hallway. It's been there since Memorial Day when we moved it out of the attic behind the knee wall to clean a bunch of junk out of there. I wasn't going to move it back; that attic is really hard to work in! It's a very awkward space.

Eventually I'll put an ad on craigslist or something. It's a nice little oven, perfect for a studio apartment, and is super good condition. Maybe I'll ask for seventy-five bucks for it.

Anyway, that's why I still have the painting hanging in the living room. It's kind of like that oven.

The Prettiest Girl in the World

Have you met the prettiest girl in the world? She's right over there. No, over there. No, that one.

Isn't she pretty? Some people have called her "lovely," and "sublime." What the hell's with that? She's pretty, goddamn it.

Once I was having brunch with her at the Space Needle, and we were in line for custom omelets. All she had to say was "Ham and Swiss, please!" to the omelet maker guy and he dropped his pan of half-cooked eggs and then collapsed. Then he started to whimper.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'm sure egg will come out of this silk blouse really easily."

After brunch we went to the Fun Forest because she wanted to go on the Music Express ride. I wanted to go on the Wild River, but she said that the color of the fake log didn't complement her sweater and her hair would get wet, even though it was already raining.

She liked the Music Express because when she sat in an outside seat, her hair would flow out behind her like a curtain of radiant gold light, and the music would make it all be like being on MTV. I sat on the inside seat, which was still fun. But not for the kid in front of us whose barf stream sprayed my head.

When we got off the Music Express, there were a couple of fat, ugly girls leaning on the entrance railings, and they started saying very mean things. "Hey, ugly!" they said, and "Where'd you get your hair done...at the hair place that doesn't know how to do hair?"

She turned to them, and then it happened: she smiled. It was not just any smile. It was the smile of the Prettiest Girl in the World. Gleaming. Magnificent. (But not sublime.)

Then the clouds broke, the rain stopped, and light streamed down from the sky. I thought I heard angelic voices. The fat ugly girls shielded their eyes from the light, shrieked, and fell. But unfortunately for them, a worker had left on the ground a sheet of plywood into which he had hammered big, rusty railroad spikes. The ugly, impaled girls writhed in pain, twitched, and then became silent.

Then the Prettiest Girl in the World and I went and got giant soft pretzels.

Bait

When Janice asked me to go on a cruise with her, I was apprehensive. What about the inevitable weight gain? Would our cabin have a bathroom? Must I talk to people in the buffet line? What if I were swimming in an on-deck pool, and the ship suddenly hit some wild weather, and I was splashed out of the pool into either the ocean or onto some wooden deck chairs?

Once I'd agreed and the ship set out, I was feeling better about it all. There was all the fresh seafood you could eat, and the deck had tons of open space for shuffleboard, although you had to guess where the lines would be because they hadn't painted them on yet. Also, you had to use empty cat-food sized cans for the pucks, and kick them because there was only one broom and it belonged to one of the cooks or something.

As I said, the deck was spacious, and you could really feel the wind in your hair, and also through your swimsuit. There ended up not being a pool, but since it's a cruise, you have to wear a swimsuit at some point. That's what the purser who's always hanging outside our room told us, anyway.

Janice’s and my favorite nightspot was a little bar called "The Boiler Room." I guess because it was darn toasty in there. We'd wear our swimsuits under our clothes, and then strip down. It wasn't the most popular spot; no other passengers ever showed up, but that means that there was always a 5-gallon bucket free to sit on. The waiter always seemed to be "on break," as the bar manager said, but he was nice enough to bring out some great liqueur from his private collection. I think it was something imported and Polish, and he let us drink it right out of the bottle.

Several times a day we'd go up on deck to watch the chef's assistants haul in the catch for dinner. There's no way we could have eaten all the seafood they brought in, and we told them so, but they just kept on pulling in these big nets through enormous winches.

A few days into the cruise, one of the cooks asked us to a special, invitation-only fish fry. Sounds great! But we were kind of disappointed. First of all, the fish wasn't even cooked! And the dining room really stank. I was afraid to say anything, but Janice & I exchanged embarrassed looks.

Apparently there was a dearth of cooks, because Janice & I had to stay down in the dining room for the rest of the cruise cutting up fish, removing the guts, and tossing the fish onto a conveyer belt that must have run to the kitchen. I was kind of resentful about having to do some of the work while other passengers sat in another dining room--which probably didn't smell!--with a cornucopia of delectable seafood gliding by.

The last day of the cruise the gift shop was closed. So for souvenirs, Janice took the shuffleboard broom and The Boiler Room manager's special liqueur. I took a few particularly shiny bolts from the base of the net winch. Now that we're safely back home we can look back on it and laugh about how we'll never go on a cruise again!